


Something Dies When We Grow Older, But We Do the Best We Can

by Whreflections



Series: Oklahoma verse [4]
Category: Kane (Band)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Stripped Down era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-24
Updated: 2012-09-24
Packaged: 2017-11-14 23:51:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whreflections/pseuds/Whreflections
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Chris haven't seen each other for three weeks, and Steve's afraid whatever next conversation they have is going to be the last one they have. It's been months since he's seen momma Kane, so he decides to drive to Norman...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Dies When We Grow Older, But We Do the Best We Can

**Author's Note:**

> 20\. Colorless

Originally, he hadn’t intended to show up at the door like this.   
  
The problem was driving into Norman had been harder than he thought, and after getting into town he’d realized he needed a drink which had turned into several drinks, and then he figured he’d wasted enough time and might as well get on with it. He’d been much more drunk than this several times in his life so to him it didn’t even really  _count_ , but he realized a few seconds after he’d rung the doorbell at the Kane’s that it would probably matter to momma Kane. A lot. Especially considering it was about four in the afternoon.   
  
He was leaning against the doorframe on one arm when she pulled the door open, her eyes softening the minute she saw him through the screen.   
  
“Hey, momma.” It slurred a little more than he’d like. “ ‘M sorry I haven’t come, I just…” He’d just been all over the place, seeing Christian every couple weeks just to poke at each other’s wounds all over again before retreating to lick them. His form of that had mostly come in writing some songs that Darren said were beautiful in the ‘I want to go home and kill myself now’ kind of way.   
  
“Stevie, honey…” God, and to think he’d thought he looked terrible that morning. He must’ve  _really_  been lookin’ the part now. Well, he might as well. He was miserable, and there wasn’t much sense in hiding it, especially here. She unlatched the screen and went to push it open, and it was then her eyes fell on his Jeep in the driveway. Her eyes narrowed, and for a second all he could see was Christian’s eyes, that same rattlesnake sharpness unmistakable. “You  _drove_  here like this?”   
  
He was still drunk enough that smiling seemed like a good idea. “Not  _most_  of the way. I just-“  
  
“Get in this house.” She pushed the door open, half yanking him in the by the collar of his jacket. “You ain’t half got sense, neither one of you, you know that?” He could hear Christian there, too. When they got  _honestly_  mad about somethin’ they cared about, they both sounded just a little more southern, the anger twisting deep out of their soul, reaching up from the roots. “You realize you coulda  _killed_  yourself?” Possible, but unlikely. In any case, the threat didn’t scare him much. He’d lost  _Chris_. Dying couldn’t really hurt much more than that, could it? If it could, he didn’t want to know what it felt like.   
  
“I’m alright.” He’d gotten used to saying that a lot.   
  
“I swear, child, I oughta wring your neck. You are  _smarter than this_ , Steve!” She reached up and pulled his jacket off his shoulders, gentle hands in contrast to her voice. “If I told Christian what you just-“  
  
“He wouldn’t care.” He knew it wasn’t true even saying it, and he was pretty sure that had to be closest she’d ever come to actually hitting him. He’d always assumed Christian got the fire mostly from his daddy, but maybe that wasn’t the case. As it was, she looked like she considered it but she settled for shaking him, fingers tangled in his shirt.   
  
“Don’t you do that. You can be as angry and as hurt as you want, but don’t you think for one second that if something happened to you he wouldn’t fall apart.” She held his gaze until she heard the ‘yes ma’m.’ he muttered under his breath, and she pushed him back gently then to sit down on the couch. She was still muttering, a steady stream of frustration, but she was fixing up cushions and pushing him to lay back against them and tucking him in with the throw Christian’s grandma’d made when he was born.   
  
Once she had him settled she sat down beside him, brushed his hair back from his forehead. “What were you doin’, Steve?”   
  
 _Every other time I’ve come here, either he’s been with me or he’s been waiting on me, and I miss him so bad in L.A. I can hardly think straight but here…here, it’s 10 times worse._    
  
He turned his head away, studying the pattern on the back of the couch. “Drove into Norman, but then I just couldn’t…he’s not here.” He sounded more like a lost little boy than he’d meant to, and he shut his eyes when she bent over him to kiss his forehead. She sighed, and she sounded almost as tired as he felt.   
  
“Go to sleep, sweetie. We’ll talk when you wake up.”   
  
‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’   
  
He woke up to the smell of food, and when he blinked and sat up there was a little light spilling into the living room from the kitchen. He was just about to haul his ass off the couch when she came back through the door with a steaming bowl in her hands.   
  
“Here. Made you some chicken noodle.” He sat back on the couch, taking the bowl and whispering his thanks from a throat that felt too dry. It tasted hot and altogether amazing, but it was a little hard not to be distracted by the way he could still feel her eyes on him, studying.   
  
He was pretty much sober, now, and on top of everything else he was feeling a little sick for letting her down. He scraped his spoon around the bowl, studying the contents as he spoke. “I’m sorry.”   
  
“Sorry you’re actin’ so reckless or sorry I found out?”   
  
Either. Both. He avoided the question and swallowed another spoonful.   
  
“Can you promise me you’re never gonna do that again?”   
  
He could, but he’d be lying. He ducked his head, muttering into his spoon. “I’m really sorry.” Maybe,  _maybe_  she’d let him change the subject. “Is Mike here?”   
  
“No. He’s on travel, two weeks.”   
  
Well, that was alright. Christian’s dad was  _family_ , of course, but right now, he wasn’t someone he exactly wanted to see. Recklessness was something he’d never approved of in Christian, and it was why they’d clashed so many times, even though they were also pretty close. He wasn’t sure he was up to getting the look of utter disappointment from him, at the moment.   
  
He ate as much as he could, and the minute he sat the bowl down on the end table Diane sat down by him on the couch. “Talk to me, Stevie.”   
  
He’d been wanting to do just that for a long time now. Of course, he’d meant to start and tell her everything cohesively, but when he tried his eyes stung so bad he could hardly think of anything else, and the first words off his tongue were the ones that crossed his mind so many times a day they were practically instinct by now.   
  
“I think I lost him.” The first tear slipped from his eyes, and he tried to hurry before the rest of them caught up. “I didn’t really think this would happen, you know, I thought we’d talk about it and figure something out. It’s just…I hardly ever see him anymore, and every time I do we fight. We haven’t…we haven’t really been  _together_  since November, not really.” Because that’s when he’d confronted Chris, and it had all been one rambling fight since then, really. And not that he could tell her, but they hadn’t had sex since then either, not even once. That was scaring him maybe more than it should, because didn’t people usually still have angry sex or something, even if they were having a hard time?   
  
He was crying for real now, and he swiped angrily at the tears on his cheeks. “I  _told_  him! I told him how important this was to me, that I needed to know he actually gave a shit about us, and he doesn’t even fucking care! He just acts like I’m being unreasonable, like I’m askin’ him to do the impossible and I told him if it doesn’t mean that much to him, then maybe…” God, he couldn’t even repeat it. It’d been hard enough to say it to Chris the first time. “And he said maybe I was right, and he walked out, and that was three weeks ago.” A sob hitched in his chest, the weight of it memory crushing his lungs. He hadn’t really  _talked_  about this, not since that last conversation. The last three weeks he’d kind of fallen off the grid. “I don’t think we can fix this. And I can’t…I don’t know what to do.”   
  
She didn’t answer, but she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pulled him against her, cradling his head against her shoulder and letting him cry. The last time he’d been home a month ago, he’d heard his parents talking behind his back, his mom worried because he was too calm, too quiet. Well, he’d officially crossed over into panicked and desperate now, but it didn’t feel any healthier. It just felt like there was this giant gaping hole in his chest that had just torn a little wider, and now the edges were bleeding, making themselves known.   
  
Christian had only seen him cry like this once, when a friend of his had overdosed. They’d only been together three years at the time, but Chris had been perfect, pulling him in against his chest and whispering soft and reassuring in his ear.   
  
Yeah, thinking of Chris made him feel so much better.   
  
When he was feeling like he pretty much couldn’t cry anymore, she spoke, her voice soft. “He was here just a couple weeks ago, you know.” She stroked one hand through his hair, her chin resting on the top of his head and still holding him close like he was 5 instead of 31. “He came in and slammed the door, went up to his room and pretty much fell apart. It took me the longest time to get him to stop cryin’ and talk to me, and when I finally did, all he’d really say is that you were gone, and you wouldn’t answer your phone. I asked him if you two were still together and he said he thought so, but he was afraid it wasn’t gonna stay that way, and the thought was drivin’ him crazy.”   
  
The phone was in the glove box of the Jeep. He’d turned it off when he’d driven away from Chris the last time, because he was terrified that the next time they talked, that was gonna be it. If he could keep them from getting to that conversation, maybe it would never really be over.   
  
“He wanted me to tell him what to do, but I told him he’s gonna have to figure that out by himself.” Her arms tightened around him, and he closed his eyes against the fresh wave of tears simmering behind them. “You’re both breakin’ my heart, but I don’t know what to tell you honey, other than you need to talk to each other, cause I promise you, he’s just as broken up over this as you are. He might not always show it when he’s angry, but he’s hurtin’. And I think that’s what you _both_  need to think about, because if breakin’ up was the right thing to do, it wouldn’t be this hard.”   
  
He pulled away and sat up, rubbing the heels of his palms into his eyes until he saw stars. His head was killing him. “Breaking up’s always hard. That’s why it sucks.”   
  
She laughed, and despite everything he felt a little better when she rubbed his back. “It does, I’ll give you that. But I’ve done some of it in my life, and I can tell you, it was never like  _this_. Anything that feels like it’s gonna kill you to do it can’t be the right thing. That’s all I’m sayin’.” She tucked his hair back behind his ear, hand coming to rest lightly on his shoulder. “Stay with me a couple days and keep me company, ok? It’s been too long since I’ve seen you.”   
  
Yeah, he could do that.   
  
‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’   
  
Steve woke up the next morning on the couch, his back just a little sore from the awkward angle he’d been sleeping at. She’d told him there were sheets on the bed in Christian’s room, and he’d gone as far as going up there before he knew for sure he couldn’t do it. This was the room Christian had had since he was 12 years old. Everything about it was undeniably _Chris_ , and if that hadn’t been enough on its own, this was a bed they’d shared before. They’d made love here, and he’d never woken up in it alone.   
  
He just couldn’t.   
  
When he stumbled into the kitchen to lean against the doorframe Diane glanced up at him from her place at the stove, and her eyes were so sad he wished he could pretend to be even a little alright. “Good morning.”   
  
“Good morning, honey.” She looked back over her shoulder at the coffee pot, nodding in the direction of the pantry. “Stevie, can you make us some coffee?”   
  
“Yeah, sure.” He fished the grounds and the filters out of the second highest shelf in the pantry. Here, everything always stayed the same.   
  
“I know I said I wasn’t gonna say anything else, but I’ve just got one more thing and then I’ll leave it alone.” He’d been fighting with the filter and he froze, listening. “Christian’s got this way of knowing what he wants, but not doin’ it and instead doin’ what he  _thinks_  he  _should_. I coulda told you when he graduated from high school he wasn’t gonna have a regular job, but he was damn bound and determined he was goin’ to college. In his head it was the right thing, so he went and started tryin’ to get an art history degree he didn’t need and wasted a few years before he just went ahead and did what he’d wanted to do all along. I can remember him tellin’ me he was leaving, and it was all I could do not to act like I’d known it was comin’. Christian, he thought he was telling me something I didn’t know. That’s the thing with him, Steve…nobody can tell him what he wants, even if you  _know_  you’re right. He’s gotta figure it out for himself. Just don’t give up on him yet. He’ll come around.”   
  
Everything in him wanted to believe she was right, but how long did he wait? Forever? Did he just give up on ever tryin’ to talk to Chris about anything important if it didn’t do any good anyway?   
  
Momma Kane sat two cups down on the counter in front of him, making him jump. She smiled, patted his back and reached around him to plug in the coffee maker.   
  
“Now. Tell me about that new album of yours, I hear you’re workin’ hard.” 


End file.
